Russian ban on certain Koran translations

At least in Russia there are courts that are kicking back at Islam, unlike in Britain where the savages are indulged by being allowed to wear the black cloak of death in court.

Reuters have reported how a Russian court has banned a translation of the Koran, on the grounds that it is extremist literature.

Reuters said:

“(Reuters) – Russia’s senior Islamic clerics warned the country’s leaders on Friday unrest could erupt in Muslim communities in Russia and beyond if a court decision ordering the destruction of a interpretive translation of Koran is not overturned.

Tuesday’s ruling by a court in Novorossiysk, a city in southern Russia, ordered the widely read text outlawed under a Russian anti-extremism law that rights activists say has been abused by local officials out of prejudice or to persecute groups frowned upon by the dominant Russian Orthodox Church.

Rights campaigners said that the decision, which will apply nationwide unless it is overturned on appeal, comes dangerously close to banning the Koran itself.”

And why shouldn’t the Koran be banned? If you or I produced a book stating that all spiritual paths except for one permitted one should be destroyed, or if I called for murder, or if I encouraged my readers to think that acts of rape were permitted, then I would expect to be questioned for causing incitement, at the very least.

Because of this judgement, as can be expected, Muslims have threatened violence if the book is not removed from the banned list. Also slithering out from under a rock are those who try to draw equivalence between the Bible and the Koran. One of them, according to Reuters, Akhmed Yarlikapov, an expert on Islam with the Russian Academy of Sciences said:

“This is a very high quality translation,” he said. “The banning of Kuliyev’s translation is utterly unprofessional, you could ban the Bible just as easily because it also has passages that talk about the spilling of blood.”

Those who defend the Koran often point to the presence of violence in the Bibles of the Christians and the Jews, but there is a huge difference between how violence is depicted. In the Bible the violence is either a historical record of battles, or is a record of violence at a particular point in human history. Unlike the Koran, the Bible doesn’t encourage violence in the here and now. That is the big split between the Bible and the Koran.

I’m not normally in favour of banning books, but the Russians are having some serious issues with Islam and the violence that it brings. Although bans make me uneasy, I can see the strategic justification for restricting access to the Islamic war manual, just as Russia restricts translations of Mein Kampf.

Islamic terrorists have been a thorn in the side of the Russian people and the Russian Government for some time now and have committed some appalling atrocities. The book that guided the beasts of Beslan would probably be something that many people wish didn’t exist.

We could argue for hours about the rights and wrongs of the Russian courts decision. We can see it as a free speech or a national security issue, to be in favour or against such a ban, but what we can’t get away from is that this was at least a decision. It was a decision made against an ideology that murders indiscriminately, whose followers rape with impunity and which shows extreme intolerance of anything that isn’t of itself.

A court decision against Islam is a positive thing of which there need to be more, not just in Russia but worldwide.